Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, "The River"

Mitch kicks off the new season with a return to the Jersey Shore

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May 03, 2023

[This season on EONS we’ll be talking about some of the best-selling albums of all time. Each Wednesday, one of us will pitch an album from Billboard’s Top 20 Albums of the Year from 1970 to 1999.]

Mitch’s Pitch:

“I thought you hated The River?”

CJ said that to me, once, years ago when I said that I was going to see Bruce & the remnants of the E Street Band perform his 1980 double album in concert.

Of course I hated The River. It’s the most Jersey album from the most Jersey artist discovering the most Jersey secret of all: you can run, but you can never escape who you are and the life you’re born into.

For years after we moved to New England I downplayed my Jersey roots, because let’s face it, Boston is a lot cooler than New Jersey (except for Sinatra and pizza). But over time I’ve come to accept that you are who you are, and that helped me to love The River once again.

Bruce is also fighting with himself, and dealing with growing up throughout The River, which perfectly distills the two sides of Bruce: the depressed folkie who loves a dirge, and the Jersey Shore party boy who's struggling with his desire to settle down.

The Jersey Shore sound reaches its peak on this album and I largely attribute that to the influence of Steve Van Zandt. Springsteen albums tend to be overproduced, Wall-of-Sound type affairs, but there is a rawness to The River that is really honest and refreshing.

The rockers and the party songs are just so much fun - “Hungry Heart” was the first Bruce song I remember from the radio, and “Sherry Darling'' is still hilarious - but even the filler tunes are elevated by excellent performances from the E Street Band. Max’s drums are strong, but not overpowering. Clarence is used sparingly to great effect. Roy Bittan’s piano is beautiful and I can’t say enough about Steve’s background vocals.

But it’s the other songs on The River, the other side of Bruce, that makes this album so special. Powerful tunes like "The River", "Point Blank", and "Stolen Car” show where Bruce’s songwriting is headed, as he further explores his gift of creating characters and telling (authentic-seeming) human stories.

It probably shouldn’t work - mashing up Jersey Shore bar jams with sad ballads and epic dirges - but somehow it does. On The River Bruce is able to reconcile his whole self: his past and his future, the rocker and the folkie, and the guy who wants to keep running with the guy who wants to put down some roots.

CJ’s Response:

Let’s play a game, shall we? Let’s turn this very good, but overstuffed, double album into a sleek, tight, stone cold killer of a single album. Which ten songs do you keep and which ten do you cut? We’ll start with the absolute keepers, in no particular order:

“Hungry Heart”
“Out In The Street”
“The River”
“Point Blank” (my favorite song on the album–the plaintive piano, the tearful backing vocals, the spoken-word bridge–it all works)
“Stolen Car”

And the absolute clunkers:

“You Can Look” (Oof! Can’t get rid of this one fast enough.)
“Crush On You”
“I Wanna Marry You”
“I’m A Rocker”
“Ramrod”

Now all we have to do is determine the five best songs from the remaining ten. Here’s what I’m thinking: “Drive All Night” and “Wreck on the Highway” are in. “Sherry Darling” and “The Ties That B-i-i-i-i-nd” are out. “Two Hearts” > “Jackson Cage” and “Independence Day” > “The Price You Pay”. So, what we’ve got left is a coin flip between “Cadillac Ranch” and “Fade Away.”

I’m gonna go “Ranch” in honor of my friend Mitch, who has wanted to own a Cadillac and white shoes ever since we were teenagers.

Looking at my ten choices, I realize that I’m heavy on the gritty dirges. That’s probably because I believe this dark alley is where Bruce is at his best. It could also be because I’m writing this after a weekend filled with two straight days of rain and an evening where my favorite hockey team took the best regular season in NHL history and basically set it on fire.

Let’s just say I’m staying away from sharp objects today.

Bottom line: The River is an all-time great album. Like most of us, Bruce just needed a good editor.

Pitch Successful (“Wreck on the Highway” is the perfect epitaph for the 2022-23 Boston Bruins.)

Ken’s Response:

A few years back Bruce Springsteen gave an interview in which he called himself (I’m paraphrasing) a fraud. The king of everyman, the crown prince of the hard-working laborer, admitted that his songs were largely interpretations of his father’s life, not his. Bruce found huge success by age 23, charted his first album at 24, and has never looked back. So factories closing in his hometown and teenage pregnancy were nothing more than observations to young Mr. Springsteen.

Here’s the thing though. His music is still very real; it captures something about the pains and struggles of a blue-collar world in a way that relates to all of us. I grew up in the safe confines of a suburban bubble where kids were expected to go to college and end up coming back to raise our own 2.5 kids and a dog. But when Bruce describes the marriage of a young couple in “The River” with, “We went down to the courthouse, and the judge put it all to rest. No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, no flowers, no wedding dress”, it always hits hard. None of this speaks to my personal story, yet somehow it feels like it does.

This has always been my favorite Springsteen album. Darkness On the Edge of Town probably has a better track selection, Born In The USA is a Hall-of-Famer from beginning to end, but The River captures some fairly dark, serious stuff through the complex musical stylings that always lead with beautiful, uplifting melodies. Bruce doesn’t need the dark chords or rarely used minor keys to emphasize his subjects, he lets the lyrics do all the talking.

Pitch Successful (He’s definitely a ROCKER!)

Mitch’s pitch was successful and The River has been added to the Newbury St. Collection. What’s your take on The River? What top 20 album from 1980 would you have picked? Let us know in the comments.

Exile on Newbury St.

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